two IDE PCI controller cards in one PC?

[Timothy Daniels]

I have a use for (4) 133MB/s IDE channels in my Dell
(which runs WinXP Pro). I'm now using a single SIIG
PCI controller card, but SIIG says that they don't know
if my Dell Dimension BIOS or their drivers would be
able to differentiate between two identical PCI cards.

Has anyone here used two identical IDE PCI cards in
the same PC? How about two different brands of IDE
PCI cards in the same PC?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Peder]

I have a use for (4) 133MB/s IDE channels in my Dell
(which runs WinXP Pro). I'm now using a single SIIG
PCI controller card, but SIIG says that they don't know
if my Dell Dimension BIOS or their drivers would be
able to differentiate between two identical PCI cards.

Has anyone here used two identical IDE PCI cards in
the same PC? How about two different brands of IDE
PCI cards in the same PC?

*TimDaniels*

I'm using 2 identical Promise ATA133 controllers simultaneously with 6 disk
drives, and two CDR's and a Zip on the motherboard controllers. The drives
come up as a unit (like a single BIOS) at boot, meaning the drive ports are
listed as 1-8 instead of 1-4 and 1-4, if that's clear.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I'm using 2 identical Promise ATA133 controllers simultaneously
with 6 disk drives, and two CDR's and a Zip on the motherboard
controllers. The drives come up as a unit (like a single BIOS)
at boot, meaning the drive ports are listed as 1-8 instead of 1-4
and 1-4, if that's clear.

Interesting! What operating system are you using?
Did you have to install or supply a driver again when
you installed the 2nd controller card?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I'm using 2 identical Promise ATA133 controllers simultaneously with 6 disk
drives, and two CDR's and a Zip on the motherboard controllers. The drives
come up as a unit (like a single BIOS) at boot, meaning the drive ports are
listed as 1-8 instead of 1-4 and 1-4, if that's clear.

So the Promise BIOS senses the second chip and adjusts accordingly.
The second bios utility senses the the first one already running and exits.
Nice. Something good may yet come from Promise.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

So the Promise BIOS senses the second chip and
adjusts accordingly. The second bios utility senses
the the first one already running and exits. Nice.
Something good may yet come from Promise.

Yeah. I wonder if SIIG's BIOS does the same.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Peder]

Interesting! What operating system are you using?
Did you have to install or supply a driver again when
you installed the 2nd controller card?

*TimDaniels*

WinXP. Whoops, I thought they were ATA133, but Dev Mgr shows them as
Promise Ultra100 TX2, sorry about that. When things just work, I tend to
forget details and move on... I don't recall whether the driver was XP
supplied originally, but Dev Mgr shows the current driver as being from
Promise. I probably had to add the driver during XP setup when I last
built the box, but it's been a year. I installed both boards at the same
time.